Reevely: Police charge two top Ontario Liberals with byelection bribery under Election Act

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Liberal Glenn Thibeault embrace as they celebrate their byelection win in Sudbury, Ontario on Thursday Feb. 5, 2014. Thibeault, who defected from the federal New Democrats to run for the provincial Liberals, beat out NDP candidate Suzanne Shawbonquit and independent Andrew Olivier. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Thomas Duncan

Police believe two top Ontario Liberals violated the province’s Election Act when they tried to muscle one of their own loyalists out of a byelection race in Sudbury.

Patricia Sorbara was Wynne’s deputy chief of staff until she left the public payroll to lead the Liberals’ 2018 re-election campaign in September. Gerry Lougheed is a party potentate in Sudbury, operator of a chain of funeral homes, and a member of the police services board. The Ontario Provincial Police have charged them both with bribery under the province’s Election Act.

Both have said they never broke the law.

Sorbara, the architect of Wynne’s unlikely 2014 win, will step down from her campaign job as she faces two bribery counts, the premier said Tuesday. It being unseemly to have your elections chief facing charges for allegedly manipulating an election.

Sorbara and Lougheed are due in court Nov. 21, the OPP say, which is four days after byelections in two ridings, including in Ottawa. The charges against her people shouldn’t matter, Wynne said.

“We are engaged in by-elections, (and) that is separate and apart from anything else that might go on in terms of these allegations and these charges. We’ll remain focused on those strong candidates we have in Niagara West-Glanbrook and Ottawa-Vanier and we’ll focus on running the best campaigns possible,” Wynne said.

Let’s review. A few months after the 2014 general election, the New Democrat who’d won Sudbury decided provincial politics weren’t for him and quit. The Liberals, favoured to win the seat back, had persuaded popular federal NDP MP Glenn Thibeault to leave the House of Commons and run for them. But the guy who’d lost for the provincial Liberals in 2014, Andrew Olivier, also wanted to run again. The party wanted Thibeault to glide to the nomination, so Sorbara and Lougheed worked on Olivier to get him out of the race.

Olivier is partly paralyzed and records conversations because he can’t take notes. He released tapes of Sorbara and Lougheed variously asking, cajoling and bullying — and urging him to think of other ways he might want to be involved with the party and the government, including in paid jobs. He might even work in Thibeault’s constituency office, Sorbara suggested, rather insultingly.

It’s considered bribery, under the Election Act, to “give, procure or promise or agree to procure an office or employment to induce a person to become a candidate, refrain from becoming a candidate or withdraw his or her candidacy.” On the tapes, talk of jobs is always framed as blueskying about possibilities rather than negotiating specific offers, but it’s pretty clear what’s going on. Drop out and we’ll see what we can do for you.

The recordings are public, the Elections Ontario investigation report is public. The charges give the opposition new opportunities to throw the issue in the premier’s face, but until this thing goes to court, assuming it ever does, we’re not getting new evidence. The police haven’t solved a mystery where there was a body on the ground but nobody knew who the perp was.

This part of the Election Act has never been used in court, so there isn’t a library of rulings on exactly what’s allowed and what’s not, which is a central question here. Does it matter that nobody ever gave Olivier a job? Does it matter that no specific offer was made? Does it matter that Wynne always had the power to reject his candidacy and when Sorbara talked to him she’d already used it? That’s been Sorbara’s explanation, including in a public statement saying she never offered Olivier a thing — she didn’t have to, because he was already out.

“Pat Sorbara has devoted her professional life to public service,” her lawyers William Trudell and Erin Dann said in a written statement. “She was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in this matter long ago and has cooperated fully with this investigation for almost two years. These are regulatory‎ offences and stem from legislation that, it appears, is being applied in an unprecedented and extraordinary way. Ms Sorbara takes the allegations seriously. She not only looks forward to, but is indeed eager, to defend these charges in court, to vigorously scrutinize what has happened here and to clear her name and reputation once and for all.”

Wynne has not been implicated by the investigations, though obviously it’s an open question what she knew about what was going on. On one of the tapes, Lougheed presents himself to Olivier as an emissary from the premier, though his saying that doesn’t prove he got specific instructions straight from Wynne to do or say anything in particular.

Charges are not convictions, and Election Act charges are what are called provincial offences, not crimes. Police laid criminal charges against Lougheed for his involvement in the Olivier business, only to have Crown prosecutors stay them once they got to court last April. Stayed charges can be reactivated for a year afterward, but for now they’re going nowhere.

Neither is Wynne.

“All I can do is do my job, and my job is to make sure that I focus on the needs of the people of Ontario, that I fulfil my commitment to them, that I do the building I committed to doing,” she said at the news conference.

This has been the Liberal pitch for a long time: Yes, we play a bit dirty in the corners, but look at our results. It’s worked very well for them for 13 years. The upcoming byelections will be a good test of whether it still does.

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